How would you manage palliation in a patient with postobstructive pneumonia caused by a mediastinal mass?

I'm guessing you're thinking of a lung cancer patient with hilar obstruction, lobar atelectasis, and 2nd pneumoia. These patients often get great palliation from RT. The primary challenge is finding the obstructing mass (which benefits from RT) and separating it from the infection (doesn't benefit). Sometimes a PET can help with that in that infection SUV is usually lower than the tumor SUV. If you fuse the tx planning CT to the PET CT you can focus on the obstructing lesion and conveniently close disease and skip the infection. If you don't have a PET or it's very confusing you can look back to older scans and see where the disease began and make an educated guess about the obstruction, or use your treatment planning scan and follow the ai...